Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Since the other government departments have been so freakin' great....

Please allow me to beat the crap out of a few dead horses before getting to my point....

The Department of Education was founded in 1980.

Here's a graph showing education spending vs. test scores. Did you notice how test scores improved and lurched upward in 1980, when all the insane spending on education got started? I didn't either.

Next topic....The Department of Energy was founded shortly after the oil non-crisis of 1977 during the Carter administration, and now has 16,000 employees, 100,000 contract employees and an annual budget of over $24 billion. The Department was created to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

(I firmly believe that wanting to reduce our dependence on foreign anything is a silly concept. You can reduce your dependence on Proctor and Gamble by making your own soap. You can reduce your dependence on Joseph A. Banks by sewing your own suits. You can reduce your dependence on the internet by going to the library. But that is no way to live your life. Depending on others is good. The only truly self-reliant people on our planet live in mud huts and have trouble keeping their feces out of their food. But at least they don't depend on foreigners.And they have a very small carbon footprint!!!)

Sorry for the digression. The Department of Energy was supposed to reduce our "dependence" on foreign oil. Here's another chart. Do you see the massive decrease in oil imports after the founding of the Department Of Energy? I don't either.

Let's pick on another recent Cabinet level Department, just for grins and giggles. Lyndon Johnson birthed the Department Of Housing And Urban Development in 1965 because some government employees conducted a study that found there was a larger possible role for the Federal Government in solving urban problems, a role that would save and create jobs for more government employees.

One of HUD's most notorious blunders was to round up large numbers of the urban poor, bulldoze their homes, and move them into high-rise hellholes where they had no connections to former neighbors, no sense of community, and no real reason to give a rip about their surroundings.

Forget the charts. Forget The Village Voice claiming that HUD was "the worst landlord" in New York City. For these guys, we need video !!!!

Here's a time lapse of the destruction of the infamous Cabrini-Green housing project in Chicago:

During the worst years of Cabrini–Green's problems, vandalism increased substantially. Gang members and miscreants covered interior walls with graffiti and damaged doors, windows, and elevators. Rat and cockroach infestations were commonplace, rotting garbage stacked up in clogged trash chutes (it once piled up to the 15th floor), and basic utilities (water, electricity, etc.) often malfunctioned and were left unrepaired. On the exterior, boarded-up windows, burned-out areas of the facade, and pavement instead of green space—all in the name of economizing on maintenance—created an atmosphere of neglect and decay. The high "open galleries" were enclosed with steel fencing along the entire height of the building to prevent residents from emptying rubbish bins into the yard, from falling, and from being thrown off to their deaths (giving the visual appearance of a large prison tier, or animal cages, which further enraged community leaders).

Here's a video of Missouri's Pruitt-Igoe housing project implosion:

To be fair, this particular hellhole was built prior to HUD's existence. But it was still a government housing project. You can scour the 'net in vain trying to find someone saying a good thing about the place.

If you're really into this kind of thing, you can go here to watch all the videos of the demolition of Chicago's Robert Taylor Housing Project.

Now. Just to cleanse the palate before our main course, here's the video of the last flights out of Saigon, April 1975.

I could bring up ethanol subsidies, the Department of Motor Vehicles, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, TARP, the Bailouts, the government-inflicted Housing Bubble, the looming bankruptcy of Social Security, the Porkulus Package, the 15 trillion dollar debt/bar tab we're going to leave to our unborn fetuses, and our government's thousands of other debacles.

I don't have time for those.

Here's the kicker.

Barack Freakin' Obama, who couldn't organize a dinner luncheon, is seriously thinking about creating a Department Of Jobs.

The administration may also merge the Department of Commerce, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and some economic divisions at the State Department into a new agency, administration officials said. Possible names include the Department of Jobs or the Department of Competitiveness.

May God have mercy on us all. I can't imagine how badly he's going to screw that up.